Introducing the new Montmartre: it’s Delboys manor, Peckham SE15

It’s not as odd as it sounds – the deprived south London area is rebranding itself as the capital’s contemporary art hub, much like the Parisian district during the 19th and 20th centuries  By Simon Tait   27 March 2011

Scarred by tragedies like the murder of Damilola Taylor, and laughed at as the home of the Trotter family of TV’s Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, Peckham, Southwark, is defying its image to become London’s new Montmartre.

Artists are the fulcrum of a ten-to-15-year plan to be launched in May for Peckham’s rebirth as the capital’s cultural heartbeat, perhaps an embodiment of the Big Society in which residents, businesses and the local authority have come together. “Peckham is the place” says gallerist Hannah Barry. “It’s where people are coming to find the best in international contemporary art”.  read more Continue reading “Introducing the new Montmartre: it’s Delboys manor, Peckham SE15”

Peckham Vision – “an important force for change’ – August 2010, Architects Journal

celebration of station Old Waiting Room restoration
celebration of station Old Waiting Room restoration

The AJ article “…juxtaposes a top-down development in Elephant and Castle with ground-up localism in Peckham”. It says: Localism can, and does, improve the quality of the built environment by enabling professional skills and community ideas to coalesce. For example, Peckham Vision, a consortium of residents, artists, businesses and The Peckham Society, campaigns for a renewed Peckham town centre. The consortium is an important force for change… Read More

Peckham’s art scene

by LAUREN HOUSSIN formerly on laurenetcaetera.blogspot.com  22 December 2009

From New York’s Meatpacking district to Berlin’s Mitte or Paris’ Montmartre, dirty corners of cities all face the same destiny: they are pioneered by young artists, and later colonized by the trendy bourgeoisie. The rents soar, and the starving bohemia has yet to migrate again.  Take the case of London. After Ladbroke Grove in the 1970s and Camden in the 1980s, the East End was conquered in the late 90s. By the early noughties, Brick Lane, Shoreditch, even Dalston were out of price. Artists soon decided to move south of the river, to Peckham. Known to most people for its gang warfare and knife crime rates rather than its culture, Peckham is home to a burgeoning art scene. Because of its empty industrial spaces and proximity to art schools, the bloody district is now an area of choice for young up and coming artists.

“An advantage of working as an artist in Peckham is that there is an audience for art in the area,” said 26-year-old Bobby Dowler, whose paintings are currently showcased at the Hannah Barry Gallery, one of the great pioneers of the area’s scene and one of the most dynamic new art galleries in Britain. “There’s an extremely good dialogue between people,” the young artist added, “and a seriousness about what they’re doing, a kind of belief that it’s important.”

Located in a former cricket bat factory at the end of an industrial road populated by factories, the Hannah Barry Gallery was invited at this year’s Venice Biennale to stage the first Peckham Pavilion. Ms. Barry founded her eponymous gallery in 2008 with Sven Mündner, and works with 32 artists, all aged between 21 and 35. Whether they are showing paintings, installations or photographies, their aim is to always show the work in-depth, in order to best represent the progress of the artist.

“Peckham is the land of freedom and opportunity,” said Ms. Barry. A hallmark of the area’s art scene is its large-scale and high-reaching projects: the spaces available can accommodate shows and works that could not take place in typical West End or East End galleries.

“Everbody has their own possibilities,” she explained, “and for us the space that we have here allowed us to do the shows that we wanted to do. It would have been a different price in the West End, and perhaps not the kind of price that a young gallery can afford. Being in Peckham has enabled us to do things on a scale that we wouldn’t have been able to do over there.”

Although East London is an established part of the city’s gallery circuit and houses the highest population of artists in Europe, it is no longer what it used to be. Its charm and character seem to be lost since property developers have taken advantage of its popularity. As rents have rocketed, many younger artists have in fact headed south of the river in areas like Peckham, where rents are more affordable.

Situated inbetween two of London’s leading art colleges, Goldsmiths School of Arts and Camberwell College, plenty of young, artistic and imaginative people are challenging the negative stereotype that is still all too-often applied to the area. “A lot of students live in the area and continue living in the area after they graduate. I have done so and I graduated in 1998,” said Emily Druiff, Director of the arts initiative Peckham Space.

Through annual commissions, workshops and public events, Peckham Space supports art practice that forges sustainable links between the arts and the local community in south east London, and aims to provide professional development opportunities for artists. The organisation is also plans to open an art venue in a raw space in Spring 2010, showcasing artworks made in conjunction with and in response to the locals of Peckham.

Peckham is home to 25,000 people from all over the world, and has the highest proportion of people born elsewhere compared to the rest of Southwark. One of the best metaphors of Peckham is the Bussey building, that from the outside looks like a run-down factory in a dodgy back alley. But penetrating the almost historic monument -it was built in the early 20th century- and looking closer, it is occupied by an aggregate of over 60 artists, faith groups, exhibition spaces  and small businesses, all existing and working happily alongside each other.

Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley and his fellow Royal Academician Tom Phillips, who both have their studios in Peckham, decided a few years ago with a clutch of others to do an artistic makeover of the run-down neighbourhood’s landscape. With this street art initiative, residents now enjoy some of the most original street murals, barcode-patterned pavements in the city and twisted or heart-shaped lampposts by the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.

Just a step out of Peckham Rye station is a wooden sculpture of a phoenix with splatters of paint on it. According to legend, the Phoenix is reduced to ashes at the end of its life, from which a new, young phoenix is reborn to live again. Using the metaphor of destruction and creation, the sculpture aims to communicate a message of rebirth among the community and the role played by the young art scene in this rejuvenation.

Most people will hear the word ”Peckham” and they will just picture graffiti, dirty pavements and urinated phone boxes. But aside from the drama that the South London area evokes, a few pioneers have managed to raise up the profile and status of the place for everyone, bringing new audiences to the area, creating people of different ages and backgrounds mixing in the same place and causing the area to now easily betray people’s expectations.




The Art revolution starts in Peckham

Hannah Barry Gallery painting

from: ARTINFO 1st December 2009

How Hannah Barry has managed to take a group of unknown young artists from a Peckham squat to a Venice pavilion in just three years.

It was always likely that British art would recover from its post-YBA slump in a manner as radically refreshing, thrilling, and unforeseen as the arrival of Hirst, Emin, et al. had been at the beginning of the 1990s. But few could have predicted that the revolution would start in Peckham.Change is afoot in this corner of London, specifically behind the anonymous-looking doors of a particular warehouse in an industrial estate. Those doors lead to the Hannah Barry Gallery, one of the most dynamic new art galleries in Britain and home to some of the best young talent in the country. Read more

Emerging Artists Find a New ‘Blank Canvas’ in London

Special Report: Contemporary Art New York Times  By Alice Pfeiffer: October 14, 2009
Peckham, a run-down district of London, south of the Thames, is said to have the capital’s highest concentration of knife crime, hairdressers and gospel churches.
Now, add up-and-coming artists: in easy reach of some of the capital’s leading art schools, the area’s low prices and vast, empty industrial spaces are attracting experimental avant-garde collectives, studios and galleries — a countercultural challenge to the established North-of-the-river world of the Frieze art fair and the gentrified East End.
“Peckham is the land of the free. It’s like a blank canvas,” said Hannah Barry, an enterprising 26-year-old who founded her eponymous gallery last year in a warehouse of a former cricket bat factory.  At the end of an industrial road populated by factories and faith groups, Ms. Barry and her co-director Sven Mündner, 31 — both graduates of Cambridge — put on 15 to 20 shows a year, showcasing young emerging artists. Ms. Barry and Mr. Mündner have also put on an annual sculpture show since 2006, on the roof of an abandoned parking garage nearby. “We felt there was room for an ambitious sculpture park in London,” Ms. Barry said. In June, she and Mr. Mündner took Peckham to a global audience, with a show, the “Peckham Pavilion,” on the fringes of the Venice Biennale.  read more …

Peckham challenging Hoxton for art

From Evening Standard By Tim Burrows 20.08.09

When Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas opened The Shop in 1993 in what is now Redchurch Street in E2, they probably didn’t realise that they were leading the cultural shift that would hit its peak in 2000 with the arrival of Jay Jopling‘s Hoxton Square gallery and result in a decade of the East End’s dominance over art, music, fashion and all things trendy. But 10 years is long enough and a Peckham collective of artists, writers and musicians called Off Modern think it’s time to challenge that monopoly… … the current focal point of the Peckham scene is not a shop, but a café. Behind a defunct Woolworths, on top of a neglected 10-storey car park and multiplex set back from the main drag of Rye Lane, is Frank’s Café and Campari Bar. Designed by Paloma Gormley (daughter of Antony) and Lettice Drake, the visitor-friendly pop-up café-bar is actually one of the exhibits in Hannah Barry Gallery’s Bold Tendencies III show.  Read more http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23734817-details/Peckham+challenging+Hoxton+for+art/article.do

An enchanting evening in Peckham

From blog: http://www.intoxicatingprose.com/2009/08/on-site-parking.html

an enchanting evening

On one of the wettest evenings outside a rainforest, I had come to ‘Bold Tendencies’, the third summer showcase from the local but far-reaching, ‘Hannah Barry’ gallery. Through sculptures, lighting and curious sounds, the otherwise derelict top tiers of a Peckham car park have been transformed into polished decay and dreamy decadence.

Architecture graduates, Lettice Drake and Paloma Gormley (daughter of Anthony Gormley OBE) took two months to build the star of the show. For the first time in the short history of this annual exhibition, the result is an amusingly titled pop-up restaurant, ‘Frank’s Café and Campari Bar’. Sturdy but tactile, its timber counter and communal tables are tinted in the cochineal tones of the famous bitters by a tarpaulin awning. Stretching over and under the tenth floor deck, securing straps were put to the test by a downpour so torrential that London’s landmarks melted into the mist. Armed with hope and broom-handles, dedicated staff prodded away the most threatening bulges pooling above us.

Read more…

Exhibitionist: The best art shows to see this week

Skye Sherwin guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 August 2009

It’s said that Hackney houses the highest population of artists in Europe: a sure sign of imminent gentrification. As rents have rocketed, many younger artists have in fact headed south of the river. The Peckham-based gallerist Hannah Barry is proving to be one of that area’s great pioneers. Earlier this summer she staged the first Peckham Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; now she has established a sculpture park on top of a local multi-storey car park. The work by emerging artists includes James Balmforth’s Failed Obelisk: snapped in two, with its phallic point bobbing absurdly on a giant spring, it makes for a droll twist on lofty abstract expressionist Barnett Newman’s best-known sculpture. A short bus journey away, in Elephant and Castle, there’s also another chance to see the astonishing work that earned Roger Hiorns his nomination for this year’s Turner prize. Seizure is a brutal transformation of a disused council flat, where copper sulphate mindlessly encrusts its once homely surfaces with hard blue crystal. Read more…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/14/exhibitionist-art-this-week

Peckham as London’s most current art area

Such is the context for Bold Tendencies III, [see details] the third and doubtless boldest of sculptural exhibitions by the brilliant Hannah Barry Gallery. The ambition, the sheer scope and the obvious media delight for this show have given it a somewhat mythical status. Attendees at the sunny launch have swollen from a probably conservative 700 to 1500 and The View is fast becoming the best in London.
Arriving on foot from the neighbouring Peckham Rye station (ten minutes / £2.40 Victoria or London Bridge) the entrance is a ropey elevator that smelled of somebody else’s urine. ‘Heaven’ was written on the stainless steel. It was so good I wondered if one of the curators had pissed in the corner themselves. … the pioneering role that this gallery, just returning from their Peckham pavilion in Venice, is playing in the emergence of Peckham as London’s most current art area. read more…

Peckham raises the roof

Move over Hackney! London’s next creative hotspot, signalled by this bold rooftop sculpture park, could be south of the river, reports Hermione Hoby, Observer
It’s a hot Tuesday night, and 1,000 twentysomethings have elected to spend it in a multi-storey municipal car park in Peckham. It’s a crowd impressive enough to match the big, bold artworks they’re here to see. A sculpture park on the roof of the 10-storey building in Rye Lane forms the highlight of the third Bold Tendencies exhibition from the Hannah Barry Gallery, which has joined forces with four local artists’ groups for a formidable show.
Coming so soon after the success of Barry’s Peckham Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, if anything can substantiate claims of an influential youthful art “scene” in Peckham, this is it. Among the works is James Balmforth’s Failed Obelisk, with its detached apex flailing on a spring, and a ziggurat-like piece from Molly Smyth called Motion Towards Collapse: both names suggest defectiveness but the pieces couldn’t look more assured of their own clout and strength. The rooftop also boasts a cafe and bar designed by recent architecture graduates Lettice Drake and Paloma Gormley – daughter of Antony Gormley, whose cast-iron bollards (part of Southwark council’s Peckham regeneration programme) grace the nearby Bellenden Road. read more…